1 May 2010 (Saturday) - Off on Holiday

1 January 2011 (Saturday) - PC Problems

Yesterday was all about looking back – today I shall look forward. I’m hoping to make use of Google Calendar a lot more. I’ve already linked it to the “Dates for the Diary” section of the blog, and it’s embedded into www.mankybadger.com. Once Facebook iron out their wrinkles I shall include it over there too. So far I’ve listed all the events for the coming year of which I’m aware. I’m quite proud of myself – even though it’s still rather early in the year for the bonfire events to have confirmed dates yet, I’ve tracked down dates for the parades in Rye and Eastbourne.

Other plans for this year include having (most of) the mortgage paid off. That should happen some time over the spring. I’m dreading to find out how poorly the endowment policy fared. When we took it out (all those years ago), our financial advisor (father in law) assured us that it was a sound investment. We were promised vast sums of spare cash when the endowment matured, which would be useful – the maturation coincides with our silver wedding anniversary. Over the years I’d vaguely hoped to use the money from the endowment to go back to Jersey for a holiday over that anniversary, but I can’t see that happening somehow.

Talking of anniversaries and wanting cash - I could do with some spare cash right now. It’s an anniversary today; it’s been four years since I turned on my PC for the first time. A blog entry from that time described the device as “if not quite the dog’s bollox, it’s certainly the cat’s cock”. The PC has done well over the last four years, but just recently it’s really started to creak. Boot-up is painfully slow, and total freeze-ups requiring plug-pulling are getting more commonplace, despite my having had goes with Windows Defenders and C-Cleaners and PC Analysers.

Perhaps some of my more techie-minded loyal readers could let me know how long I should expect to get out of a PC these days?

Talking of techie-stuff, with today being New Year, I started to back up last year’s photographs. I’ve often said that computer-types make things overly complicated for no apparent reason – here’s another example…. My photographs for the year 2002 take up just under 600Mb of disk space. A similar number of photographs in 2010 take up seven times the amount of disk space. Modern cameras generate much larger files, but the pictures don’t actually seem to be of any better quality. Today I had a stroke of genius.

Rather than copying onto loads of CDs, I could get hold of a stand-alone hard drive and back up all my photos to it. They would be more accessible than if kept on CDs, so we set off to PC world. We got there to find that their on-line catalogue was somewhat at odds with what was on the shelf. And then ‘er indoors ^TM had an idea. Why didn’t we use one of the old PCs that are gathering dust at home instead? So we went home and had a look at the pile of PCs that are gathering dust. Since I had a clear-out of rubbish over the summer, it’s not such a big pile as once it was. In fact we only had two spare PCs (if you don’t count the one that “Daddies Little Angel ^TM ” never uses).

I disconnected the mouse, keyboard and monitor from my PC and plugged them into spare PC #1. Spare PC #1 promptly announced that Windows was fatally stuffed, thank you, and goodnight. I shall take that to the skip tomorrow. Spare PC #2 booted up fine, but I realised that swapping out the mouse, keyboard and monitor was a bit of a chore, so I popped back to PC World to get a switch so’s I could run both PCs from the same set of mouse, keyboard and monitor. And then back home to plumb it all together.

Oh, the air was blue. I couldn’t get the poxy switch to work. My PC wouldn’t see it at all. Eventually I wrestled the device into submission by cheating and reading the instructions. It works fine. Which is more than can be said for Spare PC #2. Working fine at 4pm, by 6pm it had decided it didn’t want to play. Now it merely cycles round the boot-up sequence until it flashes a blue screen of death and then it starts again; never actually booting up. I had a plan to get round this problem by booting from a Windows CD. Spare PC #2 had other ideas….

I *think* the thing has more than one hard disk inside. I shall have a look tomorrow and see if I can’t adjust the boot sequence. Initially I shall do that carefully by adjusting the jumpers, and if that is unsuccessful, I’ve a large axe somewhere.

2 January 2011 (Sunday) - Sutton Valance Castle

Once I’d got up and had some brekky, I slept in front of the working PC for an hour or so whilst it played NeverWinter Nights. We then went round to B&Q for a big box to put all my Lego into. Over the years I’ve accumulated quite a bit of the stuff, and it had got to the stage where it needed to be herded together.

We then went on an outing. A week ago we joined English Heritage. I had mentioned in a previous blog entry that I was considering cancelling my membership, but I have been told that would be a foolish thing to do. English Heritage is good, I like it, and I am going to enjoy being a member. And if I don’t, ‘er indoors ^TM will break my face (!)

“We” had decided that it would be nice to go to Sutton Valence Castle today. Something which is easier said that done. The place is described as being “in thevillage of Sutton Valence which is on the A274”. So we had this naïve idea to drive into the village along the A274 and look for signs. We found the village easily enough, but there were no signs to any castles. After a while we tried exploring some of the side roads off of the A274, and once we’d gone round several labyrinthine twists and turns we round an English Heritage sign pointing along a dirt track. So we went along this dirt track and we found a dead end. We came back, and found a turning we’d missed. We followed that to the end and found a hoity-toity old biddy walking her hounds who directed us back into the village.

We eventually found the castle. I say “castle”… I am reliably informed it was once a castle. There are five large(ish) lumps of decaying masonry and two information placards. The entire thing can be seen in all its glory in five minutes. I know this, because I timed it with my stop-watch. In order to waste some more time, I enjoyed “the panoramic views over the Weald”. They weren’t so much “panoramic” as “cold”, and were only worth watching when the view was interrupted by a pair of local urchins running down the hill; one falling over and winding himself quite seriously, and the other skidding down the hill on his bum, covering his trousers in mud.

Home to find “My Boy ^TM ” in high excitement. His new car has arrived. This is his fourth car. I didn’t get my fourth car until I was in my late thirties. He’s also tidying up in readiness for his house guest. Later in the week he’s assuming temporary responsibility for his mate’s parrot whilst his mate goes on holiday. I must admit I’m quite looking forward to the parrot’s arrival. I’ve often fancied the idea of having a parrot, and I shall be interested to see how we get on with “feathery bollox” (as I am assured the bird will be known). An interesting choice of name, as it would seem that the gender of “feathery bollox” has not so far been reliably determined.

I had intended to spend some time mucking about with my backup PC today. But I gave the matter some thought. The thing was broken. It was probably repairable. I decided that it would be far more productive for me to wait until an itinerant techie-minded person should come along. I could then smile at said techie minded person and hope that they might take pity on me.

As luck would have it, the Hose Beast came calling this afternoon. He spent half an hour fiddling with the broken PC before announcing that he concurred with my initial diagnosis. ‘er indoors ^TM then produced an old hard drive and a motherboard and asked if they were any good. We decided that these bits might form the foundation of a new PC I could build from the wreckage of the old one. So whilst everyone else went bowling, I got jiggy with the screwdriver. At the end I had to call for help. It was only a small problem, but a serious one: where does the mains power switch attach to the motherboard?

With mains power to motherboard we could then get serious with the thing. We booted with smug grins, only to get what might best be described as “Quack Quack Oops!!” So we paused to strip out incompatible RAM, and started again. As I’m typing this, I’m installing Windows onto what is effectively a new backup PC. I’m hoping for the best, but fully expecting to be going to the tip tomorrow….

3 January 2011 (Monday) - Rochester Castle

I was up till quite late last night (this morning) mucking about with my backup PC. I got it to be *nearly* fit for purpose. I was quite pleased with my progress. It has to be said that ‘er indoors ^TM is loathe to throw away anything that might be useful, and over the years whenever we have upgraded the computers, we’ve saved an awful lot of computer bits. And we’ve recycled a lot of those bits by having built an almost working PC out of the scraps and fragments of leftover PCs. And I’ve done it without having to make too much of a nuisance of myself to my more IT-savvy pals. (Well, the Hose Beast was in Ashford for bowling anyway…)

I say “almost working” – when I went to bed last night, Windows was running fine. I’d got the thing onto the home network with shared space available for the backing-up I wanted to do. The only problem was that it wasn’t seeing both the hard drives in Windows, even though they are there in the BIOS. But I could fix that one…. I thought. I can remember having a similar problem when I bought a hard drive for a PC in 2003. I fixed that – if only I could remember what I did.

But then this morning when I switched it on, it started to boot up Windows, gave up and hung. And that was it. Now it won’t boot into Windows at all. I suspect that old hard drives that have been laying idle for some years aren’t quite at their best. I’m going to give up on this silly idea now (at least for a little while).

I spent the morning sulking in NeverWinter, where trolls have become endemic.

Following on from the success of yesterday’s little jaunt to an English Heritage treasure (!), we thought we’d enjoy another of their cultural wonders today. Lullingstone Roman Villa was open, according to the English Heritage website, so we arranged to meet up at the place with Simon and Corinne; they too would be able to make the most of their English Heritage membership.

We got to Lullingstone Roman Villa to find it was closed. As had dozens of other people. It has to be said that I’m not impressed with English Heritage – I shall complain in the morning.

We saw signs to Lullingstone castle, so we thought we’d drive up to that instead. It too was closed, as was nearby Eynsford castle. We got out our English Heritage books – they claimed that Rochester castle was open, and so we set off. I used the opportunity to try out the sat-nav on my phone. It worked surprisingly well; the only hiccup was that it insisted on measuring distances in kilometres, even though I’d told the thing to use imperial measurements.

There was a minor calamity on the way to Rochester – the roads were rather busy. The queues to get into the Bluewater shopping complex were amazing – traffic was backed up for over a mile in the slow lane on the A2. Why on Earth would anyone continue queuing when the traffic was like that? We sped past the queues, and soon were at the castle which (thankfully) was open. Open, but cold. It was cold the last time I came toRochester Castle. In fact it was snowing then. I went there as a birthday treat many years ago. Talking of birthdays, I was amazed to find out how many of my loyal readers have birthdays today. Happy Birthday all of you – and I hope your day was warmer than mine was.

We spent an hour or so looking round the castle, and then wandered over the road to have a look round the cathedral.

There was a sign up saying that there was a service in progress, but we went in anyway. I couldn’t see any services in progress. There was a vicar making a foul stench with a joss stick, but that was about all that was happening. It was interesting looking round the cathedral – there seemed to be half a dozen mini-churches inside the place; all sorts of different places where religious-types could do their religion-ing. I thought it cheeky of them to have a placard advertising that the place was free to visit, but they welcomed donations – a suggested donation being three quid. The placard went on to say that it costs ten grand a week to keep the cathedral running. The apathetic agnostic inside of me can’t help but wonder if those ten thousand pounds might be better spent elsewhere.

And then home - seeing we were in Rochester we came via Toys R Us to look at the lego. I was vaguely thinking of buying myself a pressie, but the cost put me off somewhat. And it’s not as though I’m short of lego….

4 January 2011 (Tuesday) - Diets and Parrots

For all that I’ve resigned myself to being a porker, I don’t actually enjoy being one. It’s the way I am. I get rather hurt by people commenting on my weight. I actually eat a lot less than many people who are a lot thinner than I am, and it’s not as though I choose to be fat.

Quite a few of my friends (both on-line and in reality) have started their post-Xmas diet, and I’ve jumped on the bandwagon.

There has been a lot of drivel said, posted and written about weight loss, weight gain, and the whole sorry story of diets over the years. Biffidus Digestivum, low carb atkins, cardiovascular, fat-burning diets… so many buzz-words are bandied about. And then there’s the whole “gym-ethos” cashing in on the perceived low self esteem of us porkers.

Do any of these buzz-words actually mean anything? Do any of these diets actually work? One of my cousins is rather forthright – yesterday she posted on Facebook “its not rocket science, if you want to lose weight you cut out all the crap, you exercise, and hey presto, you lose weight!” Me – I tend to look at the matter from a more medically-related point of view. Consider the above diagram. Hole A is larger than Hole B.

But it’s easy to come up with pet theories about weight loss. Doing it is not so easy. Or is it? Over the next few days I shall be really good. I shall cut out all meat, bread and potatoes from what I eat. I shall stop drinking beer. I will not have a biscuit with morning and afternoon coffee breaks. We’ll stop having crisps in the house. When not on a late shift I shall walk to and from work rather than driving. When on a late shift I shall (hopefully) go for a swim before work. When my stomach hurts from hunger I will tell myself that this is a good sign. And the weight will fall off. In the first week I shall lose about six pounds – maybe as much as half a stone. By the end of the month I shall be a stone lighter than I am today. By mid February I will be visibly thinner.

And I shall also be fed up with the dull food. And so I shall allow myself the odd treat. Or two. And by the end of February I will have given up all pretence of diet. By the end of April I shall be back to the weight I am today, and will be talking about a diet again.

I’ve done diets before. When “Daddies Little Angel ^TM ” was a lot smaller I once went on a mega-diet. I lost over six stone in weight. I did it then. I can do it again.

Let me qualify that – I *can* do it again, but what incentive is there? Food is to be enjoyed. A lifetime of salad is simply not enjoyable. I have a theory that if I exercise more, then eating less might not be such an issue. I can walk to and from work. I shall start off with that (when it’s not raining), and see how I get on.

I came home from work this evening to find a large van outside my house, and “My Boy^TM ” supervising the unloading of a large cage. I helped move said cage into the living room – “Feathery Bollox” has arrived. She’s (!) quite a sweetie, she likes monkey nuts, dried bananas and chicken. She likes climbing all over the outside of her cage, and she was fascinated by my doing the ironing.

She’s still rather timid – she’s quite happy for people to be around, until they get to within about a foot of her. Then she backs off. She does a very good imitation of a smoke alarm, and says “What?” occasionally.

I have actually always wanted a parrot. We’ve got her for a couple of months – let’s see how we get on….

5 January 2011 (Wednesday) – Stuff

Up with the lark (or should that be “parrot”?), and I sorted laundry whilst watching telly. I say “watching telly” – most of the time was spent watching the antics of the parrot. Having opened her cage I thought she’d be happy enough to be left, so I went to get on with the washing up. I popped my head round the door to see “F.B.” marching across the living room table; clearly on a mission. “What are you doing?” I asked, and the parrot ran back to her cage.

To Asda to get lunch, and a radio for the parrot. We had this plan to leave the telly on for her, but modern tellies switch themselves off after a couple of hours. So the parrot now has a radio of her own. She can listen to Radio Four and swear at the politicians. I also bought her some grapes. And then to work, where I spent the morning worrying about F.B. Fortunately “Daddies Little Angel ^TM ” wasn’t at college this afternoon, so I was able to get regular parrot updates. It would seem that when I’m not in the house, the parrot is incredibly talkative and is quite a potty-beak, regularly using the F-word. What a rude parrot.

I came home to find the parrot somewhat subdued, and to add insult to injury she doesn’t like grapes. She took one from me, passed it from beak to claw, then back to beak and she spat it across the room. How ungrateful!

Meanwhile in non-parrot-related news, the world continues to turn. We are on Day Two of the diet. I had a couscous salad for dinner. I have absolutely no idea whether couscous is good for weight loss or not. Pundits are very quick to say what one should not eat when one is trying to lose weight, but not so fast to recommend foods which will aid weight loss. I suppose it’s because there is no such food. The best way to lose weight is not to have any food at all. Mind you, I’ve not walked to work yet. Yesterday it was raining, and today I didn’t want to walk – I wanted to be home promptly to see the parrot.

I had some fun at work today. Next week an associated department is having a formal inspection, and the more junior staff were being coached on how to deal with the inspectors. It is likely that inspectors will ask them where certain documents are to be found, what they should do under certain circumstances, to which senior members of staff they should refer for various matters. Keeping a straight face I told a gathering of lab-assistant-types that if questioned and they didn’t know the answers to any of the questions, then they should cry. Normally bursting into tears puts most people off, but if that didn’t work, my back-up plan was that they should bite the inspectors. It would be a brave inspector indeed who would not give up after receiving a vigorous fang-ing.

(I bet someone will squeal on me about this to management, who just won’t see the funny side…)

This evening I went to the astro club’s committee meeting. Whilst I’m technically not actually a committee member, that’s never stopped me sticking my oar in. On Saturday we’re holding an event to co-incide with the BBC’s “Stargazing Live” program, and tonight we had a little conflab to make plans for Saturday. If any of my loyal readers are at a loose end on Saturday, from 6pm we’ll be doing the astro thing at Woodchurch village hall. It promises to be a popular evening – in the last five days the club’s web site has had over three times the average monthly number of hits. And most of them are coming from the BBC’s “Stargazing Live” links.

6 January 2011 (Thursday) - More Stuff

A late start, so I had a bit of a lie-in. I awoke to find an empty house, and the parrot was surprisingly quiet. I wondered if she was asleep – I didn’t want to wake her, so I got some brekkie and wandered to my PC where I did some accounts (still skint), and let my blood pressure go through the roof.

One of the advantages of living where I do is that we’ve got an excellent travel network. The trains leave town in five different directions, and there’s a motorway too. The motorway has the occasional (almost weekly) hiccup though. Whenever the cross channel ferries aren’t running, the freight lorries can’t get to the continent, and so the local police close the local motorway and use it as somewhere to park the lorries which are waiting to get to France. Sometimes these queues of lorries are over five miles long, all parked, going nowhere, and staying put for days.

On reading this, most people would think that such an occurrence would be rare, very rare. In practice the ferries cease operations with amazing regularity, sometimes seemingly on a weekly basis. And when they shut up shop, so the motorway is closed too. For many years it has been suggested that a purpose-built staging area be built to house lorries waiting to cross the channel. Today the Government announces it will not fund this project. The solution is simple. Bill the French. After all, the port closures are usually due to them being on strike anyway.

Meanwhile a pointless government quango is doing it’s best to waste a million poundsof public cash to ensure it will have still funds to waste in the future.

I then did a bit of research. It’s my birthday in a few weeks time. And every year I like to do something for my birthday, but I struggle to find what I might do. Those few attractions which are open are oh-so-cold in February. On the NHS discounts website I fund I could get a 45% reduction on the price of a trip to Legoland. Now at first sight that looks like quite a bargain, but I still begrudge paying over twenty quid to go to Legoland, By the time I’ve shelled out to park my car I’d be looking at paying the best part of forty quid, and even then I’d be lonely. I can only get the bargain for me, and I doubt anyone else is going to fork out forty quid for the non-discounted ticket. I suppose the people at Legoland know what they are doing – they must be getting enough punters through the door at forty quid each, or they wouldn’t charge so much. But I’m not paying that price. What price would I pay? In all honesty – no more than a tenner.

And then the phone rang. Someone claiming to be called “Hector Grey” phoned claiming to be representing “Burnhill investments”. He said I shouldn’t worry – he wasn’t trying to sell me anything. He was merely letting me know that his company would be writing to me to let me know about the credit crunch and how it had affected land values. He obviously had a script to work to, and really didn’t like me asking questions. I gave him two minutes, and when I eventually got the spelling of his name and company out of him, I told him that seeing how he could not pronounce either his name of the company that employed him, I didn’t really want to have anything to do with his company. He had no idea what I was talking about, and tried to continue with his speech. I hung up.

Meanwhile “Daddies Little Angel ^TM ” desperately needs empty cigarette packets for her friends college project. If any of my loyal readers can save empties even from friends and family for me it would be greatly appreciated :o)

7 January 2011 (Friday) - Parrot and Weight Loss

Up early, and I spent half an hour stroking and fussing the parrot. She’s daft really – she’s quite content to be stroked – I can be stroking her with both hands and she’s fine. She’s not keen on being picked up, and she’ll walk away if I try to pick her up, but soon comes back for more cuddles. I came home from work this evening and carried on fussing her. After an hour or so “Daddies Little Angel ^TM ” came home, and far from having the soppiest parrot on the planet we suddenly had the parrot from hell. A vicious beak was snapping left, right and centre, managing to fang both “Daddies Little Angel^TM ” and me. But the moment “Daddies Little Angel ^TM ” left, the parrot went back to being a right softie.

‘er indoors ^TM has also commented that the parrot will only tolerate her presence when either me or “My Boy ^TM ” are about. I have heard this about parrots, but seeing it for myself was quite an eye-opener. Having an animal which will only behave for half the family isn’t going to be practical.

I overheard an interesting conversation today. There was a gentleman standing outside the front of the hospital, bellowing into his mobile phone. Fortunately for him, the Almighty had chosen not to over-burden him with intelligence. This chap was shouting into his mobile phone that she was getting better. I wondered who “she” was – apparently she’s had an operation to put some stitches in. That was nice for her.

And talking of people of restricted intelligence and hospitals, I see Britain’s fattest man is planning to sue the NHS. Apparently he wasn’t pleased with the advice he received when his weight was a meagre thirty stone, and blames the NHS for allowing his weight to reach seventy stone. Perhaps he did need specialist help. But at the end of the day, who was the person who was pushing pies down his neck? On reflection I honestly think the NHS should sue him for the cost of the bespoke treatment he has received.

Speaking as a porker on a diet myself, you can ask for all the help in the world, you can blame weight gain on everyone in the world, but at the end of the day you either exercise more, eat less, or gain weight.

And as I reach the end of the first week of diet, I’ve not actually lost any weight at all…

8 January 2011 (Saturday) - Stargazing Live

I have remarked before that God laughs when we make plans. Having been planning for tonight’s “Stargazing Live” event, the club secretary’s father in law has been taken very ill in Dorchester, and so the chap who’s been the lead player in organising the event was suddenly unavailable. It’s a great shame – Jason is so keen and enthusiastic about the club, he puts in so much effort behind the scenes, and with only a day to go, he couldn’t be there.

I volunteered to cover for him (as much as I could), and I was on his doorstep at the crack of dawn, loading all the gear into my car. It’s no secret that my knowledge of practical astronomy is rather pathetic: I’m never going to be much good at a live stargazing event. I can only identify four constellations (five if you count the Pleiades), and probably half a dozen stars. But I can get the keys to unlock and open up the hall, put out chairs, put up posters, make the tea, enthuse to the punters and generally busy about in the background whilst those who do know what they are talking about can get on with impressing the public.

With al the gear in the car I came home and went through the presentation Jason was going to give. Normally when I give a talk to the astro club I’ll have prepared the presentation months in advance, and I’ll know what I was thinking of when I made the slides. I wasn’t quite sure what Jason had in mind, but it was too late to change anything, so I familiarised myself with the slide order, then tried to video the parrot.

Having listened to her jabbering on all morning, as soon as I got out the camera, she shut up and wouldn’t say a word, even to “My Boy ^TM ”, who is very obviously parrot favourite. There was an entertaining ten minutes whilst “My Boy ^TM ” cleaned out the parrot cage. A combination of fascination and hero worship meant he couldn’t get on with the job as parrot was permanently in the way. The more he told her off, the more she got in the way.

But I was getting restless. We’d arranged to meet at the hall in Woodchurch for the astronomy event at 4pm. Bearing in mind we were going to be one man short, I decided to get there early. I’d rather have everything ready and then be wasting time in the hall knowing that all was done rather than having wasted time earlier only to be rushing later.

I opened up the hall at 3pm, and it was as well I got there early. By the time all the other helpers arrived (an hour later) I’d done very little more than opened up the halls, set out the tables & PC, and put up some posters. Normally setting up for a club meeting is rather straightforward. Today the time flew by, and before we knew it, it was 6pm, and the public were arriving. There was a good turn out of club members, but there was a lot of people who’d come along on the strength of having seen the BBC’s programmes in the week.

I have never seen the Woodchurch hall so crowded. With standing room only, we started off with a welcome to everyone. Drew gave a little chat about the size of the solar system, and then gave a quick demonstration of the night sky with the Stellarium software so that people would know what stars and things to look at outside. We then adjourned to the car park where it was dark and clear to do some practical astronomy.

With a dozen or so telescopes out, people were queuing to see things, but everyone seemed quite happy to queue. A few of us pointed out various stars and constellations to those waiting to look through telescopes, and even I managed to attract a small following.

After an hour I popped into the hall for a cup of coffee and I was amazed. For all that the outside practical astronomy session was really crowded, there were at least sixty people sitting in the hall, apparently waiting for the next part of the show to start. So I loudly announced that they had five minutes to escape, or I would give a lecture. To my surprise, those standing at the back of the hall came and sat down and looked attentive.

It turned out that our event had been more successful than we’d imagined – we’d attracted more of exactly the sort of people we’ve already got in the club: a really extreme mix of astronomers. Lots of people who like looking through telescopes. And lots of people (like me) who like sitting comfortably in the warm listening to someone telling them what can be seen through telescopes. And lots of people between the two extremes. With over sixty people outside looking through telescopes, I went inside and lectured to over sixty people about the life of stars. The talk went well, people laughed when they were supposed to, and afterwards quite a few people came up to me to ask about joining the club.

And all too soon the evening had drawn to a close. During the initial introductory session we had a head count, and then made a note of anyone turning up later. We had at least 145 people along, and we heard of lots of people who arrived, saw the packed car park and went away again. I had hoped to try out some astro-photography this evening, but time went by too fast.

I wonder how many people will come to the club meeting at the end of the month….

9 January 2011 (Sunday) – Whitstable

I was woken by the phone ringing. Were we going for a walk today? I looked at the clock – it was nearly 11am. Last night’s Stargazing Live must have taken more out of me than I thought. So I rescheduled our walk for a couple of hours and leapt into action.

Once up and breakfasted Batty arrived with some KFC. He fed a (unsalted) chip to the parrot – she seemed to love it. We then set off to Tankerton where we parked up and walked along the coast to Whitstable. It’s a lovely place to walk – there’s the beach huts, the offshore windmills, the view across to Sheppey. And once you get to Whitstable, there’s the Whitstable Brewery bar. Or that is there used to be. It’s been closed on the last few times I’ve been to Whitstable, and from what I can work out on pub reviewing web sites, it rarely opens any more.

We wandered round the corner to the East Quay seafood restaurant. The advantage of popping in to this place is that they have a bar which does beer from the Whitstable brewery. However the disadvantage is that it’s staffed by arrogant schoolchildren. The chap who (eventually) took our order did so without a word to us, but whilst shouting at another spotty oik that there was too much work for him to do. Said spotty oik then (also wordlessly) slammed down a sign saying that they were no longer serving food. We took our drinks and sat down and chatted for half an hour or so. On reflection, although I’ve raved about the Whitstable Brewery’s Oyster Stout in the past, my home brew is better. And it doesn’t come with the attitude.

Mind you, the East Quay restaurant wasn’t all bad. As we were leaving there was a rather harried looking young lady loitering outside the gents lavatory who wasn’t at all pleased to hear the words “the poo’s not coming out Mummy” being bellowed to any and all passers by.

We then walked back along the beach to the cars, and returned home. For all that I’ve whinged about the bar staff, I do like a walk along the north Kent coast. If any of my loyal readers are free in a couple of week’s time, we might just go for a walk along theHerne Bay seafront.

Once home we opened up the parrot cage and let F.B. out for a bit, and I turned on the telly – “Are You Being Served – the Movie” was playing on one of the more obscure channels. I slept through most of that drivel, and then once tea was scoffed I spent an hour or so preparing my next talk for the astronomy club. It’s not due to be given until next September, but it never hurts to be prepared.

Whilst I was finding out all sorts of stuff about scattered disc objects (what?!) my mobile bleeped. I had a text from the chairman of the astro club. He said “Running a bit late, be there as soon as we can”. I wondered what this was all about – was I supposed to be meeting up with him this evening? I could only imagine this was a text in relation to yesterday’s Stargazing Live event. I went into the details of the text on my phone, and sure enough the message had been originally sent at 4pm on Saturday afternoon. I received it this evening at 6.30pm. It’s rather worrying that a text message (supposedly a form of instant communication) can take over twenty six hours to arrive…

10 January 2011 (Monday) – Blackmail

There was a charity collector outside Tesco’s today. I don’t know what he was collecting for – I made a point of ignoring him. Perhaps I’m being mean, but I resent the way that these people get in your face, rattling their tins and generally using emotional blackmail to get you to support whatever they feel is a worthwhile charity.

Talking of emotional blackmail, my cousin’s commented (on Facebook) that she gave cash to a beggar yesterday. Not because she felt sorry for the beggar, but because she felt sorry for the beggar’s dog. My immediate thought was how could a beggar afford a dog – they cost a small fortune. The initial purchase runs into hundreds of pounds. And the food bills aren’t cheap. By the time you’ve forked out for the vet bills as well, a dog costs thousands of pounds. If someone is begging to finance a dog, then clearly they can’t afford that dog. And the dog cannot be receiving the treatment it deserves. Where are the R.S.P.C.A.?

Mind you, so many beggars seem to have a dog with them. Is a dog a vital part of begging apparatus these days? I can’t help but think that if the beggar has a dog and is using it to blackmail passers-by into giving him cash, then the animal should be taken from them. Circuses are no longer allowed to exploit animals, why should beggars?

Another form of extortion which boils my piss (to coin a phrase) is the world’s inability to deal with piracy on the high seas. I can understand how highwaymen get away with their crimes. They can hide in the forests and lurk unseen before they pounce out shouting “Stand and Deliver”. But with pirates, it’s different. Ships out at sea can see pirates coming. On a good day pirates can been seen from miles away. And if it’s dark or foggy, then they have radar to detect the pirates. I got to go on the bridge of the ferry when we went from Newhaven to Dieppe. The radar is really good and picks up every little vessel.

So why is piracy still a problem? Sadly the answer is that humanity clearly and demonstrably actually want piracy to remain a problem. Take for example the latest anti-piracy measures. Having seen pirates coming, the potential victims of piracy are to be issued with a bright light with which to dazzle the pirates. Now I don’t want to be sarcastic in any way, but surely pirates have heard of sunglasses?

Am I being so reactionary in suggesting that all merchant shipping be equipped with torpedoes? I really don’t think it would be necessary to sink many pirates before the International Guild of Piracy (patent pending) got the message.

Meanwhile, following on the astronomical theme from the weekend, here’s something to make you sit up and think – an amateur astronomer in Cambridge has been taking astro-photographs that are reportedly every bit as good as photos obtained by NASA. I’m slowly getting the urge to have a go at astro-photographing. After all – you never know what you might find – only last week a ten year old girl found a supernova…

11 January 2011 (Tuesday) - One Week Later

I had rather a late night last night. Being on a late shift I didn’t get home till well after 8pm, and by the time I’d showered and had tea, time was getting on. And F.B. (the parrot) was asking to play. When she’s left alone in the house we put her in her cage just in case she gets up to mischief. She seems quite content in the cage with plenty of toys, and her own radio to keep her company. But when I came home last night she asked to come out. When put in her cage, she sometimes hangs upside-down on the cage’s roof door and says “hold on!”. We’ve come to realise this is her way of asking to come out. When “out” she doesn’t do much more than she does inside the cage, and she doesn’t go very far “out” at all – mostly climbing over the outside of the cage. Having said that, I wouldn’t trust her unsupervised – she does go on “walkabouts” occassionally.

And I wasted quite a while this morning playing with her. As I cleaned her water bowls she kept bothering me to stroke her; she won’t be picked up, but she likes to be petted. I spent over an hour this evening fussing her.

She’s learned new words. “Hello Buffy – give us a kiss” in the voice of “My Boy ^TM ” and “Come on Buffy – get in your cage” in the voice of ‘er indoors ^TM. The latter is a phrase she’s picked up after ‘er indoors ^TM spent half an hour on Sunday night trying to get the parrot to go to bed.

The parrot’s been here for a week, and she’s quite a character. When younger I always wanted a parrot, and now I’ve got one (albeit temporarily) I’m quite enjoying having her to stay. But I have a decision to make. Her owners have decided that they are going to sell her, and as we’ve currently looking after her, we’ve got first dibs. The cost is….. I won’t go into pounds and pence, but let’s just say that I could probably (just about) find the cash. But do we want her here permanently?

She seems to like company – and regular readers of this blog will know that I’m not a stay-at-home guy. All the time it’s wintery we won’t be doing much, and so we’ll be about for the parrot for the next few weeks, but as the temperatures rise, so we will be out and about more. It wouldn’t be fair on the parrot to keep her locked up in her cage for so much of the time.

But I shall blub when she goes….

Another one-week anniversary today is celebrated in that my diet is now one week old. I’ve lost a few pounds – not as many as I might have hoped. But then for all that my food intake is down, I’ve not really started doing much exercise. I must do something about that.

Meanwhile science is excited by the discovery of the smallest planet so far found outside of our own solar system. At 1.4 times the size of Earth, it’s definitely rocky, like our own Earth. However before we start trying to call up E.T., we should bear in mind that the planet is so close to its parent star that it couldn’t possibly harbour life.

Although it’s definitely a very significant discovery in planet hunting, I can’t pretend to be very excited about it. It’s (just) yet another planet in a star-hugging orbit. What would really interesting would be the discovery of planets that are a lot further from their parent star, in (nearly) circular orbits. And the discovery of those will take time – planets close to their parent sun are detectable far quicker than planets further out (I could go into tedious detail…).

The probes doing this astronomy (COROT and Kepler) have only been up and in place for a few years. I think it’s fair to say that if hypothetical similar probes launched at the same time from a hypothetical planet ten light years away wouldn’t have found our own Jupiter yet.

12 January 2011 (Wednesday) - This n That

I was up with the lark (parrot) and was ironing by 6am. I used the opportunity of an early start to watch some DVDs. For some time I’ve been wanting the “Comic Strip” DVDs – a comedy series from the early to mid 1980s. I put the DVD set onto my Xmas list, and I got it. I’ve been watching episodes over the last few weeks, and I’m about half way through the box. I’ll probably watch the lot, but I must admit that its not as good as I remember it. It’s not so much “alternative comedy” as “an alternative to comedy.”

And then before work I went to Sainsbury’s to get lunch. I went there yesterday (for a change) and was quite impressed with their salad bar. For a porker on a diet, this had quite a range of food that would be good for weight loss. (Using the word “food” in its broadest context!). I got there this morning to find the salad bar hadn’t been set up. I was on a late start yesterday and had called in at 11am. At 7.30am today I was too early. I asked what time they set the thing up. I was told it would be about 9am. I pointed out that would be too late for me, and for a lot of people who wanted lunch. They agreed with me – it would be too late. But if they set the salad bar up earlier, then it sells out too quickly.

I did wonder if maybe setting the thing up earlier, and getting more of the stuff in might increase their profits, but what do I know?

Work was the same as ever, and then home to the parrot. When the subject of parrot-sitting was first brought up several weeks ago, the fruit of my loin who was championing the idea assured me that I wouldn’t need to clean up any mess. He would ensure the water and food bowls were filled, he would clean the cage out. He would sweep the carpet.

It didn’t take *that* long to feed, water and clean the parrot out really….

13 January 2011 (Thursday) - An Assessment

To work, where one of my trainees was to be formally assessed. As an assessor myself I enjoy assessing other trainees. I like visiting other hospitals. I feel I get a lot from the experience; I learn a lot, and (hopefully) at the end of my visit everyone is smiling after a successful assessment. (I failed one once, but that’s another story…). However when I have an assessor in to see one of my trainees I am worried sick. I hate it!

The point of the assessment was to examine the trainee’s pre registration portfolio and to see if he had met all the criteria. I’ve actually gone to the trouble to produce a website all about this pre registration portfolio. Ideally someone else would have done this already, but the formal advice we receive about this is minimal. The idea is that the advice should be minimal to encourage the trainees to be artistic and creative in compiling their portfolio. No two portfolios should be the same; each should show the individual compiler’s input.

Some assessors (like me, I hope) have taken this philosophy on board. Others (to be fair it is a small minority) come along with a fixed view of right and wrong; their way being right and everyone else’s being wrong. I have encountered such narrow minded assessors in the past, and had to fiercely argue my trainee’s worth.

In one such case I challenged the assessor to explain why she felt certain work was not up to the required standard. Her answer was “I don’t like it!”, snarled in a rather arrogant fashion. She eventually admitted defeat very gracelessly. Another assessor once criticised one of my student’s work for having both too much and too little health and safety input. And then went on to refuse to see any contradiction.

As part of the assessment process the assessor interviewed me, and asked if I had any difficulties in mentoring. I told her that I hated the variability between assessors. She laughed, and related her experiences. She’d had dealings with a chap who would only accept work from a student in a question-and-answer format. Essays, case studies, reflections were all worthless to him. I liked today’s assessor. She (like me I hope) knew what she was doing. My lad passed his assessment. That’s now nineteen trainees I’ve overseen to qualification.

Home to the ironing, ably supervised by the parrot. Over tea we watched Time Team; pausing occasionally to listen to next door having a shouting match. In the past we’ve had a very stormy relationship with next door. A few years ago I was to blame for all the world’s ills, and when he starts going off on a rant my heart sinks as I wonder what I am supposed to have done wrong this time. I must admit I’m waiting for the complaints about the noise the parrot makes. And to be honest I will listen to those complaints on the day that they get rid of their piano. But today I would seem to have escaped lightly. They were arguing about money I think.

And then in a fit of boredom I started messing about with my phone. Have you ever felt that everyone else seems to have a sexier phone than you? I certainly have. It’s not so much the phone that is sexier, as the things the phone can do. So I spent a little while browsing to see what apps I might download to liven up my phone. I got an astronomy package that is a load of old rubbish. I got a virtual zippo lighter (for no adequately explored reason). I got a new phone theme that crashed the phone’s software. I got a virtual piano that I can’t play. I decided against installing the virtual protractor and the McDonalds finder. If any of my loyal readers might suggest apps worth having (for a Nokia N8), I’m all ears…

14 January 2011 (Friday) - Sat-Nav, Aliens, Cards

The news was interesting today. I *know* I shouldn’t read it – it only winds me up. The news pundits are all relating the story of the Oldham by-election. As is always the case, the first by-election after a General Election was won by the major opposition party. This comes as no surprise – it always happens. This is *not* surprising, especially in a climate where we have a government for which nobody voted and that nobody wants (have I done this rant before?). But over on Google News there are nearly two thousand articles about this election result. Two thousand articles about something which really is quite trivial, mundane, totally expected and utterly unexciting.

It bothers me that you actually have to search to find the news of importance. Perhaps the planet-finding successes of Kepler and COROT together with the mass interest in astronomy stirred up by the recent Stargazing Live programmes have touched a nerve with officialdom. No less an august body than the Royal Society has warned the United Nations of the potential dangers posed by First Contact with extra-terrestrials.

And they may well have a point. After all, mankind *could* launch an interstellar mission within a few years using current technology. It would not be easy, and it would take a massive investment of time, effort and money. But given the right impetus it could be done. What might be the right impetus? Total environmental collapse might fit the bill. (Look at the floods hitting Brazil and Australia).

And with the Earth uninhabitable, and the remnants of humanity unleashed into starships which would effectively be life-rafts, what would be our reaction to any E.T.s we might meet on their planets? Would we be friendly and respectful to them? Or would we merely see them as being in our way on some very valuable real estate that we intended to steal?

Just a thought…

To work, where I received an invitation to a rather dull meeting. Said dull meeting is planned to take place several counties away. The directions to the venue were rather sparse. The directions were merely a post code prefixed with the words “Type this post code into your sat-nav”. It’s a sign of the times that everyone is expected to have sat-nav. Fortunately for me, there is sat-nav on my phone. It’s one of the apps on it that is actually worth having.

It’s a shame that I don’t intend going to this meeting, really.

Home, tea, and then round to South Willesborough for a game of cards. Tonight I amazed even myself when I managed to have a pair of twos beat a pair of aces. But this was more than compensated by my being dealt the seventeen of b*ll*cks later in the evening. (The seventeen of b*ll*cks is a rather unusual card, it has to be said)

Various hobbies come and go in my life, and playing poker seems to be staging a comeback. Personally I think that’s a good thing – I like a game of cards, even if I am rubbish at it.

And in parrot-related news, any possible plans to keep the parrot on a long term basis have taken a further step backwards. It turns out that far from being the parrot’s favourite, “My Boy ^TM ” is as likely to receive a bite as his sister. And today his sister received a bite which drew blood. I saw it happen: “Daddies Little Angel ^TM ” offered the bird a peanut – the bird ignored the food being offered and deliberately bit the finger offering the food.

Having the parrot only being handlable by “Yours Truly” isn’t going to be practical.

But this would seem to be in agreement with what I’ve heard about parrots – they are usually one-person birds. She is truly soppy with me – I can stroke her, fuss her and pet her and she seems to love it. But she is vicious with anybody else who tries to touch her. Having said that, I received a rather vigorous chewing this evening. To be fair to the parrot, I had been feeding her garlic bread (which she loves) and my hands probably did smell tasty…

15 January 2011 (Saturday) – Stuff

I checked out the news over brekkie this morning. It was only yesterday that I whinged that those writing the news seem to have odd priorities. The trivial and ephemeral is given headline status. That which actually will affect the future of humanity is generally treated (at best) as light relief or (more usually) with contempt. A few days ago (last Tuesday) I mentioned about the discovery of the planet Kepler-10b. It’s the smallest exo-planet so far discovered. At 1.4 times the size of Earth, it’s definitely rocky, like our own Earth. However it is so close to its parent star that it couldn’t possibly harbour life.

The main stream news has picked up on this story. Not for the story’s scientific worth, or for the implications to a humanity which, having stuffed up its own planet, may well soon need to look for another. The only reason they have picked up on the story is that they don’t like the name that has been assigned to the planet. And the tone of the article is rather anti-scientific, purely because science hasn’t assigned a soppy name to this recently discovered planet.

Something else which seems to go unnoticed by the press is the fact that if a member of the public has a complaint about a health care professional then there is a very open process by which allegations of unprofessionalism, incompetence and malpractice are followed up. It’s laid out by the HPC, as are the results of their investigations. Such investigations are a matter of public record. Periodically I go through the archives. Some make macabre reading, some are downright criminal. And this one amazed me – a psychologist who told his patient that she was both psychic and a witch, and went on to offer to be present at the birth of his patient’s children.

I spend a lot of time telling family, friends and the public at large how wonderful the NHS is (and it is!), and then I find myself undermined by this sort of thing…

To work – even though the new boiler has been in place for some months, the hole it left in my finances hasn’t been filled. Overtime is always useful. And after a morning at work I came home, fussed the parrot, and then “My Boy ^TM ” drove us all to my brother’s house where was saw the birthday nephew. Whilst I slept on the sofa, everyone lese used the Wii to call up You-Tube videos, waking me only when it was time to go home. If nothing else, I got to play with the sat-nav on my phone on the way home.

And now I’ve got the thing to talk in miles (rather than kilometres), next time I’ll have some idea what it’s talking about. If only I could change the silly voice on the thing…

16 January 2011 (Sunday) - Battle Abbey

It has to be said that I have been wondering if the neighbours can hear the parrot. However I was woken by the neighbour’s alarm at 6.30am this morning. I drifted back to sleep only to be woken again by the noise of their dogs shortly before 7am. And usually on a Sunday the other side’s continual piano playing sets the first lot’s dogs off barking shortly after 8am. So bearing in mind that the parrot didn’t really make any noises at all until 9am today, I’m not really that worried that she’s being a nuisance to others. A nuisance to us maybe… but that’s another story. But it was as well that we were up and about – the postman rang the doorbell at daybreak. He had a parcel and told us they had a backlog to clear. On a Sunday!

I then spent a while on eBay looking at hoodies. I’m rather conscious that I only wear one hoodie – I’m sure everyone has seen my “Grumpy” hoodie. I like it because it has a full zip front. I have plenty of other hoodies, but none with zip fronts. For some inexplicable reason I would seem to be the only person who wants a hoodie with a zipped front.

I scoured eBay and couldn’t find hardly any, and those I could find, I didn’t like.

Somme relatively recent blog entries have recounted the fact that I’ve made a shrewd investment in joining English Heritage (!) The plan for today was to use our membership of said august body to enjoy the falconry display they had advertised to be taking place at Battle Abbey during the day. So we set off, this time using my sat-nav for real. Yesterday, doing the thing for fun was entertaining: it seemed to work. Today the thing was rubbish; wanting to send us down the narrowest farm drives, and estimating it would take over seven hours to drive thirty miles. Furthermore it had stopped warning us of upcoming junctions: only telling us where to go once we were just past the junction. After twenty five miles of this stupidity I realised I had it set to “walking” mode. Fortunately for my nerves “driving” mode worked fine, and we found Battle Abbey with no problems.

We soon met up with the Brighton contingent, and then we had what I can only describe as “Lullingstone flashbacks”. Two weeks ago we all drove for miles to meet up at Lullingstone Roman villa. Advertised as being open on the English Heritage website, we found the place closed. Today we arrived at Battle Abbey to see the falconry display advertised only this morning on the English Heritage website, only to find it had been cancelled a month ago.

There are two schools of thought about websites. One theory is that they are a useful way to convey information to the general public, and therefore should be dynamic things which are regularly updated. The other theory is that you have a website to quieten those who like that sort of thing, and having set it up you ignore it, because you had no idea what it was all about in the first place.

English Heritage clearly subscribe to the second theory. This annoys me – if they aren’t going to bother maintaining their website, they should shut it down. Better no information than wrong information.

But with our English Heritage membership we got free admission to the abbey and the grounds, so we had a mooch round. It was all rather scenic, and nowhere near as cold as on our last visit of two years ago. We had a good look round, climbed several staircases that we probably weren’t supposed to, nearly upset the normal people a couple of times, and then it was time for scoff.

Thanks to the wonderful bit of technology that is my mobile phone I’d managed to look up the phone number of my favourite pub in Battle, and to book us a table for lunch. The food was excellent – and loads of it, but I was disappointed by the ale selection. On my last visit in December 2008 they had five ales on. Today they only had two – and the selection was rather disappointing: Harvey’s and London Pride. But we were going for a meal, not a booze up. We enjoyed ourselves, and after we’d scoffed we had a wander round Battle before wending our way home.

Once home I took all the astro club stuff back to Jason, and then got the next batch of home brew started. This one should (hopefully) be a dark(ish) best bitter and should be ready to drink in the first week in February. All it needs is a silly name…

17 January 2011 (Monday) - Stuff

To work where we had the grand podge-a-thon weigh in. After two weeks of dieting, I’ve gained a pound in weight. As well as dieting, I really need to exercise more, but my great scheme to get more exercise by walking to work has hit a snag – it’s been raining in the morning every day for the last two weeks. Oh well…

Work was the same as ever - we’ve not yet been revolutionised. The Prime Minister has today announced how he’s bringing in a new scheme whereby the running of the health service will be turned over to the GPs. I’ve mentioned before that this idea has been tried before (and abandoned) with no lessons having been learned from the exercise. In theory it’s a good idea. GPs get to choose where the money goes in the health service, what treatments will be available, and where. In practice it will be a return to a post-code lottery of health care in which the average man on the street will have to hope that he gets ill with the same thing as everyone else locally has got. With restricted finances, and the shots being called by those with vested interests in curing their specific cohort of patients (as opposed to humanity at large) money will be spent on the maladies of the local majority. Which means that if you go down with Chediak-Higashi syndrome or some other such obscure disease, you’d better piss off and see what BUPA has to offer. Which would be a shame.

In practice I doubt whether it will make any difference. It has been my bitter experience of the last thirty years of working in the NHS that by the time the latest great shake-up reaches the shop floor, it has already been abandoned in favour of the next great shake-up. I can’t help but feel that whenever the NHS has a shake-up it should be left to actually get on with it.

Whilst we’re on the subject of expensive health care issues, here’s a questionnaire you might care to complete. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority are wrestling with some ethical dilemmas and want the public’s input. At the moment sperm and egg donors give their seed for free. In the future they may be paid for such contributions. Is that right? I don’t know, but I can’t help but feel that if the reason for paying people is because of a perceived lack of donors, then rather than paying donors, actually advertising for some might be a good plan. I’ve never seen any adverts asking for a bottle of “Badger’s Best” (!)

Mind you, expecting common sense from officialdom is being somewhat hopeful. For a series of reasons which will (probably) appear in future blog entries, I need our marriage certificate. The problem is that sometime over the last twenty four (and a bit) years we’ve lost the thing. It’s possible to obtain copies, and I wasted half an hour with Caroline at the Department for Administrative Affairs trying to get a copy. Oh, this girl was thick. She took down all the details, read them all back to me, and had the lot wrong. So we did it again. And again. She had about a dozen particulars to take down, and it took half an hour. I wonder if I’ll ever get the copy of that certificate…?

18 January 2011 (Tuesday) - Scams and Parrots